[PAX] Where's the line drawn between formal education and original thought?
- Thread starter Gaze
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Original thought is everything outside of formal education. As time progresses, it will become increasingly difficult to have an original thought because someone will have thought of it before.
You have to have advanced studies though to become aware of all the stuff out there and go beyond it.
You have to have advanced studies though to become aware of all the stuff out there and go beyond it.
I think formal education usually provides a platform, and framework, and maybe even a propulsion system for original thought. One benefits from some basic building blocks to begin with.
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Original thought is questioning what you are taught, or what is commonly held as being true... treating information critically.. searching to find indescrepancies and such. I guess.
Original thought?
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The line I guess is only to how do you treat the knowledge given to you by formal education. How much credit are you able to give (I suspect many of the famous thinkers were unable to give full credit, either consciously or not).
Original thought is contained in a multitude of quirky intuitions you build on your own, like the speculated apple that has fallen on Newton's head. So these vague subjective intuitions of your own, form the original elements of your mixture of what is known. But most of it is usually experiments, exhaustive searches, precise calculations (or other following of existing methods) etc.
At the same time, with regard to practical tasks, much of the results is very logical and intuitive, so newer generations sometimes get it on their own very early; it's not fully "on their own", but concepts of discoveries are already so well applied, that they have enough info to derive what was done before indirectly.
Okay, about art. Mmmm, it's more free, you can think/make anything and call it art, it doesn't have to be in line with objective reality. But its impact is measured again by objective reality, people relate it, and you do it subconsciously. So again, how can you claim originality on it, except by using the power of your ego over other people who would disagree that it's original. There's a hidden illusion of originality, similar to the illusion of choice, when someone goes through the manipulative tests of marketing experts. Just because you are never completely aware of how your memory mixes up things, we assume it appears from nowhere.
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The line I guess is only to how do you treat the knowledge given to you by formal education. How much credit are you able to give (I suspect many of the famous thinkers were unable to give full credit, either consciously or not).
Original thought is contained in a multitude of quirky intuitions you build on your own, like the speculated apple that has fallen on Newton's head. So these vague subjective intuitions of your own, form the original elements of your mixture of what is known. But most of it is usually experiments, exhaustive searches, precise calculations (or other following of existing methods) etc.
At the same time, with regard to practical tasks, much of the results is very logical and intuitive, so newer generations sometimes get it on their own very early; it's not fully "on their own", but concepts of discoveries are already so well applied, that they have enough info to derive what was done before indirectly.
Okay, about art. Mmmm, it's more free, you can think/make anything and call it art, it doesn't have to be in line with objective reality. But its impact is measured again by objective reality, people relate it, and you do it subconsciously. So again, how can you claim originality on it, except by using the power of your ego over other people who would disagree that it's original. There's a hidden illusion of originality, similar to the illusion of choice, when someone goes through the manipulative tests of marketing experts. Just because you are never completely aware of how your memory mixes up things, we assume it appears from nowhere.
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Original thought and formal education are a cycle, where original thought is an initial design or scaffolding, and formal education is merging that new idea into the continuously growing foundation of widespread knowledge, that allows further stability for new thought.
Looking at the grand scheme of things, originality is definitely something that seems increasingly rare from the standpoint of 'has that idea been thought of before at any point?'
However, I'm also taking into consideration a separate definition, of 'is there anything that person has been exposed to that this idea is heavily derived from?'
An odd take, perhaps, but personal originality and societal originality are two things I hold separately. Either way, regardless of how rare it is, originality does exist. Formal education, however, should theoretically be a growing area where more previously original ideas are introduced. Mind you, depending on where you're living and how you are raised, it doesn't always seem to be the case.
However, I'm also taking into consideration a separate definition, of 'is there anything that person has been exposed to that this idea is heavily derived from?'
An odd take, perhaps, but personal originality and societal originality are two things I hold separately. Either way, regardless of how rare it is, originality does exist. Formal education, however, should theoretically be a growing area where more previously original ideas are introduced. Mind you, depending on where you're living and how you are raised, it doesn't always seem to be the case.
Dear Helen:
I must steal half a moment from my work to say how glad I am to have your book and how highly I value it, both for its own sake and as a remembrance of an affectionate friendship which has subsisted between us for nine years without a break and without a single act of violence that I can call to mind. I suppose there is nothing like it in heaven; and not likely to be, until we get there and show off. I often think of it with longing, and how they'll say, "there they come--sit down in front." I am practicing with a tin halo. You do the same. I was at Henry Roger's last night, and of course we talked of you. He is not at all well--you will not like to hear that; but like you and me, he is just as lovely as ever.
I am charmed with your book--enchanted. You are a wonderful creature, the most wonderful in the world--you and your other half together--Miss Sullivan, I mean, for it took the pair of you to make complete and perfect whole. How she stands out in her letters! her brilliancy, penetration, originality, wisdom, character, and the fine literary competencies of her pen--they are all there.
Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that "plagiarism" farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul--let us go farther and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances in plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second hand, consciously or unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them any where except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.
When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten thousand men--but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we call it his but there were others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone, or any other important thing--and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite--that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.
[/B][/B]
Then why don't we unwittingly reproduce the phrasing of a story, as well as the story itself? It can hardly happen--to the extent of fifty words--except in the case of a child; its memory tablet is not lumbered with impressions, and the natural language can have graving room there and preserve the language a year or two, but a grown person's memory tablet is a palimpsest, with hardly a bare space upon which to engrave a phrase. It must be a very rare thing that a whole page gets so sharply printed on a man's mind, by a single reading, that it will stay long enough to turn up some time or other to be mistaken by him for his own.
No doubt we are constantly littering our literature with disconnected sentences borrowed from books at some unremembered time and how imagined to be our own, but that is about the most we can do. In 1866 I read Dr. Holmes's poems, in the Sandwich Islands. A year and a half later I stole his dedication, without knowing it, and used it to dedicate my "Innocents Abroad" with. Ten years afterward I was talking with Dr. Holmes about it. He was not an ignorant ass--no, not he; he was not a collection of decayed human turnips, like your "Plagiarism Court," and so when I said, "I know now where I stole it, but who did you steal it from," he said, "I don't remember; I only know I stole it from somebody, because I have never originated anything altogether myself, nor met anyone who had!"
To think of those solemn donkeys breaking a little child's heart with their ignorant rubbish about plagiarism! I couldn't sleep for blaspheming about it last night. Why, their whole histories, their whole lives, all their learning, all their thoughts, all their opinions were one solid rock of plagiarism, and they didn't know it and never suspected it. A gang of dull and hoary pirates piously setting themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they think they've caught filching a chop! Oh, dam--
But you finish it, dear, I am running short of vocabulary today.
Every lovingly your friend (sic)
Mark (Mark Twain)
I must steal half a moment from my work to say how glad I am to have your book and how highly I value it, both for its own sake and as a remembrance of an affectionate friendship which has subsisted between us for nine years without a break and without a single act of violence that I can call to mind. I suppose there is nothing like it in heaven; and not likely to be, until we get there and show off. I often think of it with longing, and how they'll say, "there they come--sit down in front." I am practicing with a tin halo. You do the same. I was at Henry Roger's last night, and of course we talked of you. He is not at all well--you will not like to hear that; but like you and me, he is just as lovely as ever.
I am charmed with your book--enchanted. You are a wonderful creature, the most wonderful in the world--you and your other half together--Miss Sullivan, I mean, for it took the pair of you to make complete and perfect whole. How she stands out in her letters! her brilliancy, penetration, originality, wisdom, character, and the fine literary competencies of her pen--they are all there.
Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that "plagiarism" farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul--let us go farther and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances in plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second hand, consciously or unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them any where except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.
When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten thousand men--but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we call it his but there were others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone, or any other important thing--and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite--that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.
[/B][/B]
Then why don't we unwittingly reproduce the phrasing of a story, as well as the story itself? It can hardly happen--to the extent of fifty words--except in the case of a child; its memory tablet is not lumbered with impressions, and the natural language can have graving room there and preserve the language a year or two, but a grown person's memory tablet is a palimpsest, with hardly a bare space upon which to engrave a phrase. It must be a very rare thing that a whole page gets so sharply printed on a man's mind, by a single reading, that it will stay long enough to turn up some time or other to be mistaken by him for his own.
No doubt we are constantly littering our literature with disconnected sentences borrowed from books at some unremembered time and how imagined to be our own, but that is about the most we can do. In 1866 I read Dr. Holmes's poems, in the Sandwich Islands. A year and a half later I stole his dedication, without knowing it, and used it to dedicate my "Innocents Abroad" with. Ten years afterward I was talking with Dr. Holmes about it. He was not an ignorant ass--no, not he; he was not a collection of decayed human turnips, like your "Plagiarism Court," and so when I said, "I know now where I stole it, but who did you steal it from," he said, "I don't remember; I only know I stole it from somebody, because I have never originated anything altogether myself, nor met anyone who had!"
To think of those solemn donkeys breaking a little child's heart with their ignorant rubbish about plagiarism! I couldn't sleep for blaspheming about it last night. Why, their whole histories, their whole lives, all their learning, all their thoughts, all their opinions were one solid rock of plagiarism, and they didn't know it and never suspected it. A gang of dull and hoary pirates piously setting themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they think they've caught filching a chop! Oh, dam--
But you finish it, dear, I am running short of vocabulary today.
Every lovingly your friend (sic)
Mark (Mark Twain)
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I bolded where he talks about how we accidentally plagiarize. Helen Keller was accused of plagiarizing when she was eleven. She accidentally plagiarized a story. She could not discern from her own imagination and a story that she heard when she was small. I think that the whole letter is so enchanting.
I think that we are the sum of what we read and conversations that we have. He makes some great points.
I do think that a person can have a new take on an old idea. I think this is where originality is.
I think that we are the sum of what we read and conversations that we have. He makes some great points.
I do think that a person can have a new take on an old idea. I think this is where originality is.
But what ever do you mean?
I never saw the two as related... at all.
Does that answer your question?
S
Shai Gar
There is no such thing as originality.
I bet everything have been thought of already.
Probably, but inventing a light bulb by yourself WITHOUT knowing there is a light bulb out there is kind of original as well.
It is totally different from reading a given page about light bulbs.
I prefer to see it this way :usa2:
I think you're right. I had a difficult time trying to figure out where the line would exist.. Duh.